Ensure your man knows you believe in him.
Just like you long to be reassured when your man drives angrily away after an argument (“I’m sorry for driving away without saying goodbye, honey.”), your man longs to be reassured that you believe in him.
In other words, he needs to know and see in the daily things of life, that you’re on his side. That you won’t second-guess him all the time. That you’ll appreciate him when he folds the clothes and puts them away, even if he didn’t fold them the way you do. That you may have differences of opinion about certain tactics with the kids, but that doesn’t shake your appreciation for him or your trust in him as a husband and father. He needs to know, in short, that you see any disconnects or mistakes as momentary blips on the radar, not as giant signposts of his inability or inadequacy.
After reading that blog on how terribly inadequate I felt when a brand-new talk on a new topic didn’t go well, Jeff had a great insight on this. “I think it might help if women realized that that inadequate feeling often keeps us from trying things. It would be as if you just stopped doing speaking events on the new research because the discomfort you felt that day was so great. Yet you know that you can only get better by speaking and testing out the material. You have to keep trying. And we need to keep trying too–even when it is really uncomfortable. We don’t want to check out either, you know. This is where it is so important for a man to know his wife is in his corner, believing in him, even when he doesn’t believe in himself.”
After all, the men tell me, a wife knows her husband better than anyone else in the world. So it is your signals that matter most.
Even when we have differences, most of us do believe in our man. Let’s make sure they know it.
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Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).
Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.
Visit www.shaunti.com for more.
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